Space Tricks - Hairy T North Store Championship 1st Place

Adding my experience playing against it -- in top 4 at 401 championships (29 people) -- that it is definitely a strong version of NEH. It's advantage over "typical", imho, are that:

-It has stronger ice that the type Fastro as the wormholes and nebula can be killer for non-stealth rigs.

• Even without astro it can score without just 2 credits, advance, trick, done. This with drip means mid-to-late game siphons don't do much.

The disadvantage that I can see are:

• seems to take longer to setup that Fastro as need the advancable ice to be there and advanced 2+ times for the non-san-san FA (and only 2 san-sans).
• unless the ice is rezzed when pull off tokens it's same cost as biotic'ing it out as lose 2 clicks + 2 creds in the advancement tokens on ice. It's across turns so that's good but it makes the ToL decision a tough one if under pressure and ice not rezzed.
• your token batteries are vulnerable to ice destruction so depends if NEH can go NEH speed (often does) before the right cutlerly is found.

Also want to note, for the Toronto pride, that Kaiwen had a similar list (Asteroid belts) posted for Friendly Troll before the London post :) I remember it vividly as I lost to it in the finals and gave a big ... huh? ... when the first trick hit the table. I know deck was around before that but Cosmic Ice help alot.

thanks shane for the shoutout, I was indeed the first to post a constelICE NEH deck on netdb :))

still wondering shy ppl opt for wormhole over ast. belt, which is insanely taxing as well and a better option in neh which has weak barriers but strong code gates. also ast. belt is an awesome early ice which neh needs (since they dont pack much ice at all) while wormhole is bad as an initial ice.

While I didn't see Kaiwen's NEH list, I do remember that he won a Store Champs with it! IIRC he said he was only running Asteroid Belt? I'm sure it's equally as strong, if not better! While I didn't make this deck, I can fully understand why run Wormhole over asteroid belt: Criminals. I find that criminals don't have a good way through Wormhole, and once Wormhole hit the table against most of my criminal opponents yesterday, it gave me a lot of breathing room. I also faced a Quetzal in double elim at 401, so Asteroid Belt would not have helped there either.

Quetzal is a definitely a good point since, as Kaiwen points out, typical NEH doesn't have great barriers so could be tough to stack barriers on her.

Less sure on the criminal point. Passport is a decent solution, costing only 1 more than Gordian and NEH doesn't ice up remotes that much (if at all sometimes). Also Stealth Andy is pretty powerful and popular ( although criminals really dropped in representation on Saturday ) and refractor with cloak(s) and/or ghost runner(s) is a good solution although could come slow. But I think Tony's actual experience trumps my guesses about benefits against criminal versus just general goodness of a 7-strength code-gate for effectively 6 credits :) Actually, wormhole might be worth it for the comedy factor when you have to copy a pop-up.

Wormhole is the reason I stopped running Criminal. While Stealth Andy is definitely a thing, I haven't played against one in a tournament yet. I played against Leelas and A Tenma, and of course, none of those IDs run refractor. Passport may cost only one more to break than Gordian, but it's a very expensive solution, one that won't allow them to run often. I mean, at the end of the day, I don't think the choice of Cosmic ICE will change all that much about the deck. It's NEH, and once it gets rolling, it doesn't matter what ice is protecting your servers. I think the most important piece of the deck, other than obvious ToL FA, might actually have been DBS. That card outright wins games against Shapers who are R&D locking you, if you have an Astro token. I definitely wish I had a third

Agreed, DBS is huge piece of the puzzle, even just for the 4 cred must-trash drain it enforces (after you've gotten a free card draw). You have probably too, but I've seen it splashed in every action and probably every non-exotic id.

i dunno i feel like breaking asteroid belt with corroder is a great tax too, i don't see the greater need to use wormhole instead. tollbooth, popup, etc. are all great options in code gate, why not use influence to patch a weakness.

@sruman of course! It really is one of the most universally useful cards of the Lunar cycle

@johncraven Tollbooth is expensive to rez. The whole point of the deck is to never spend more than 3 bucks on rezzing Ice, and operate on little to no money. Thats why Hedge Fund was taken out, didn't want to wait to have 5 bucks to play it. That's the reason to run ToL over Biotic IMO. As for Ast Belt, I find that Wraparound is pulling its weight in such a AI-heavy meta. As I said earlier, though, I think that the choice of Cosmic ICE doesn't impact the deck too much. As long as you have a cosmic ICE with 2 counters, a ToL, Astro/Beale and DBS, the the rest of the deck is filler. I actually think I should have put in a second Fast Track instead of the Shipment from SanSan.

@TonyStellato right, I don't use tollbooth either haha, but quandary and enigma are awesome too.

I guess I'm not up-to-date on the meta, but wraparound seems like an early only ice. It becomes so bad once a fracter lands.

DBS is really good but the 2 cost to rez is non-negligible... I often felt it's rez hit in NEH. I only have 1 in my current build (2x fast track is way too important) But in your setup with marked accounts instead of hedge fund, it's worth considering... that's an interesting swap imo. I always thought hedge was easy to trigger due to sweeps week, so didn't bother swapping it out.

Nice changes (takes a lot of guts to slash Hedge Fund, but it can definitely pay off!) Best thing is that I can see this deck remaining relevant in a post-Clot world, with your additions of SfSS and Cyberdex. Congrats on the victory!